Debit

To the "good looking," well educated, yadda, yadda, yadda man who is ticked off at morons: You stay with that thought darling, and you too can be in politics in no time at all! I'm ticked off that my debit card is declined even though money is on the card. Each phone call to the debit card company received a different explanation and apology. Biggest surprise: You can only access 75 percent of the balance if it's processed as a credit card, but no explanation for this. Purchase specific store gift cards and save yourself money, embarrassment, and headaches!

Card sharks Today's multibillion-dollar credit and debit card industry succeeds largely because using plastic is safe. Or at least it's supposed to be. Recent breaches in security have shown that the credit industry hasn't necessarily kept ahead of hackers. Consumers and card issuers, take note. In the most flagrant recent example, thieves stole names, numbers, security codes and more from as many as 40 million debit and credit cards used at the retailer Target. And it's far from the only breach.

LAWSUIT. Visa and MasterCard conspired to prevent other companies from introducing a national debit card network while delaying the launch of a debit card they created jointly, 12 states claim in a lawsuit filed Wednesday. A debit card can be presented at stores like a credit card, but the money is automatically transferred from the card-holder's account to the merchant's. Visa U.S.A. Inc. and MasterCard International Inc. allegedly undermined competition through a joint venture, called Entree, and by acquiring control of the nation's two largest automated teller machine networks, according to the complaint.

EUSTIS - Police today asked the public's help in identifying a person who stole a purse last month from Burger King at 1990 N. State Road 19 and used the victim's debit card to make two fraudulent transactions in the Leesburg area. The suspect is shown in a surveillance photo taken at the Cumberland Farms store at County Road 473 and U.S. Highway 441 shortly after the Nov. 12 theft. Before that, the person was seen on surveillance in a red car with a blonde woman using the stolen debit card at the Marathon gas station at C.R. 473 and County Road 44, police said.

If you regularly use your debit (ATM) card to make purchases, or if your card earns airline miles or other rewards, get ready for fewer benefits and more fees. New regulations cap the fees banks can charge merchants to process debit card transactions. And the big banks, unwilling to lose even a few pennies of potential revenue, decided that if they can no longer get fat fees from merchants, they'll ding you card users instead. You're not really surprised, are you? Here's at least some of what's happened so far: -- Wells Fargo will soon test $3 monthly fees for debit cards on accounts held by residents of Georgia, Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, and Washington; Sun Trust has already started issuing debit cards carrying a $5 monthly fee; Regions Bank will add fees to some cards starting in October; and Chase is testing monthly fees in a few areas.

Fraud investigators in Lake County are looking into reports that debit card users are being targeted by scam artists. Some bank customers reported receiving text messages or recorded messages on their phones informing them that their debit cards were cancelled or somehow compromised, the Lake County Sheriff's Office said. A message to customers includes part of the cardholder's account number, lending a bit of legitimacy to the claim, the Sheriff's Office said. Customers at several banks have been contacted.

Consumer clout Tuesday's decision by Bank of America to drop its planned debit card fee, after similar moves by other big banks, shows that the consumer is still king. Several major banks have imposed or tested monthly fees on customers using debit cards for purchases. But Bank of America, the nation's No. 2 bank, seemed to provoke the biggest backlash with its plan to charge its own $5 fee starting in January. Some politicians, including Florida Rep. Jeff Clemens, called for a ban on banks charging debit card fees.

Washington Mutual, the nation's largest thrift, said Thursday that some of its debit-card customers were among the victims of a nationwide electronic heist. The Seattle-based thrift and fourth-largest financial institution in Florida said it began notifying an undisclosed number of customers last week that their Visa Check Cards would be replaced. Washington Mutual is the second major U.S. financial institution to acknowledge that its customers' card numbers may have been stolen from an as-yet unidentified national retailer.

CheckSmart has come under attack again from consumer groups for one of its products, just as its parent company prepares to take the Dublin-based payday lender public. The groups, led by the National Consumer Law Center, have complained to federal regulators about CheckSmart's prepaid debit card, which they say allows the company to get around state law limiting interest rates on payday loans, including Ohio's 28 percent cap imposed in 2008 by voters. Instead, the company can charge what works out to a 400 percent annual interest rate.

NEW YORK -- MasterCard International Inc. agreed Monday to settle its share of a multibillion-dollar antitrust suit in which Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and other retailers alleged that the credit-card company illegally forced them to pay high debit-card processing fees. But Visa USA Inc. said it plans to defend an identical policy requiring merchants that accept its credit cards also to accept its signature-based debit cards. Those cards cost merchants far more than bank network debit cards that require users to key in a personal identification number, or PIN. If the retailers win the 6-year-old lawsuit, stores such as Wal-Mart, Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Circuit City Stores Inc. could cut their transaction costs by refusing to take signature-based debit cards.

More companies in Central Florida and across the nation are paying their employees with plastic. The use of payroll debit cards, which are automatically loaded with money each pay period, is skyrocketing. In Orlando, companies that swear by the payroll cards include Darden Restaurants, Tony Roma's, and Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill. Nationwide, the number of such cards is expected to more than double in five years to 10.8 million, according to business-research company Aite Group.

When a ring of suspected thieves from Romania planted a skimming device on the ATM at an Orlando Chase branch, a bank security team hundreds of miles away spied on the men via a live video feed. The suspects didn't realize when they installed the skimmer, a device capable of stealing countless debit card numbers, that modern technology combined with old-fashioned policing was going to lead to their near-instant arrests. As the bank employees watched the suspects in action - the men removed the device several hours after they installed it - the security personnel simultaneously spoke with Orange County deputies, who were covertly watching from the ground.

TALLAHASSEE - Although Gov. Rick Scott is calling his push to give teachers $250 debit cards for school supplies a big hit, not everybody sees it that way. Citing his own wife's experience, state Sen. Darren Soto said Wednesday he was unhappy that the new program was taking so long to roll out and has been adopted by only seven of Florida's public schools districts. The Orlando Democrat's complaint: The cards didn't come in time for his wife, who teaches science at Jackson Middle School, to buy supplies ahead of next week's start of school.

To the "good looking," well educated, yadda, yadda, yadda man who is ticked off at morons: You stay with that thought darling, and you too can be in politics in no time at all! I'm ticked off that my debit card is declined even though money is on the card. Each phone call to the debit card company received a different explanation and apology. Biggest surprise: You can only access 75 percent of the balance if it's processed as a credit card, but no explanation for this. Purchase specific store gift cards and save yourself money, embarrassment, and headaches!

A Valencia College student who was caught during a traffic stop with hundreds of names and Social Security numbers interspersed with what looked like class notes pleaded guilty to several federal crimes, the U.S. Attorney's Office said Thursday. An Orange County deputy who stopped Hussein S. Chery in March 2012 also found 38 debit cards that were issued in the names of other people, four notebooks with handwritten notes that corresponded to the debit cards, and other people's mail.

Orlando police are warning the public of a scam after a local man was told he had to pay thousands of dollars to the Internal Revenue Service or else he would be arrested and deported. The victim was contacted by telephone Friday and told he had to pay up. According to an Orlando police report, the victim bought PayPal debit cards with cash and transferred $4,896 and $3,752 to the suspect in order to "settle the two cases. " On Monday, the victim was contacted again and told he still owed $752, the report said.

Virginia welfare recipients may soon be able to junk their food-stamp coupons and pay for groceries with a sort of credit card. In a new welfare-reform initiative, Gov. George Allen this week proposed replacing paper-based welfare benefits such as food stamps with an automated debit card that would act much like a credit card. His budget amendments, due in two weeks, will include $875,000 to begin testing the so-called Electronic Benefits Transfer System in selected localities next fall. Allen said the debit cards will streamline administrative paperwork and reduce fraud and abuse in the food stamp program.

Gov. Rick Scott wants all Florida teachers to get state-funded debit cards they can use to purchase school supplies many now pay for with their own money. The debit card proposal — with no specifics on how much each teacher might have to spend — is one of several Scott officially announced this morning in a speech in Fort Myers. He used the speech to explain the education part of his agenda for the upcoming 2013 legislative session. Scott said in a statement that he will be pushing lawmakers to maintain current spending on public education and "also working to increase our investment in education," if the economy allows.

Federal regulators have ordered a fast-growing Central Florida bank to correct oversight problems with its prepaid debit-card business, which is operated by a payday-loan company and has been criticized by consumer groups as a form of "predatory" lending. In a detailed, 15-page agreement made public last month, regulators said Lake Mary -based Urban Trust Bank must submit a comprehensive business plan to prevent what they described as "violations of law and regulations[,] and unsafe and unsound banking practices relating to vendor management practices.